—

a/n: noel, i created you exactly two years ago today. to celebrate that, lets finally get up the hardest episode i've ever had to write.

—

The episode opens with a shot of a man with a bloody hand pulling his truck into the parking lot of a motel, showing the date March 5th, 1977 on a newspaper.

The man enters his room, number 217, and inspects an injury on his side in the mirror (an animal bite, presumably that of a werewolf). He opens the curtains and sees that it's a full moon, loading a bullet into a rifle and shooting himself in the head as his eyes glow beta gold.

—

Present day, the school bus with everyone on board pulls into the same motel, called the Glen Capri. Scott says that he's seen worse motels in his life, trying to be optimistic. Stiles asks where, Noel saying unhelpfully "The shoddiest motels usually have the best free breakfasts."

"What's with you and the word 'shoddy', and when was the last time you stayed in a hotel with less than four stars?" Stiles asks him as we hear the coach blow his whistle, telling all the kids that the meet was pushed to tomorrow and that this was the only place he could find to house them all so last minute.

The students pair themselves off, as per Coach's directions and as Scott and Stiles walk by and take a key, Noel asks if he can crash with them in their room.

"Why?" Stiles asks, Noel saying almost fearfully "Because if not, the only person left is Hailey. And she hates my guts."

To prove his point, a dainty looking girl walks past holding her key and she slams her shoulder into Noel from behind as she does. Scott and Stiles watch her go, and Scott says without turning to look at Noel "We get the beds."

"Done and done," Noel says, fixing his bag on his shoulder and smiling gratefully.

Lydia tells Allison that she doesn't like this place, Allison suggesting that the owners probably don't like it either but reassures her that it's just for one night.

"A lot can happen in one night," Lydia says as the credits roll.

—

3x06 features a mid-season credits change. Up to this point, Noel has been shown in the opening credits between Tyler/Derek and Holland/Lydia. 3x06 marks the first use of an opening credits scene in which Noel is shown between Dylan/Stiles and Tyler/Derek, bumping him up one place in the succession.

—

In the boys' room, all three of them collapse onto the two beds (Noel beside Scott in his bed).

"Four. I have four," Stiles says, Scott asking in disbelief "Four? You have four suspects?"

"Yeah, it was originally ten. Well nine, technically, I had Derek on there twice."

"So who's the first suspect? Harris?" Noel asks, completely stepping over the Derek accusation, Stiles saying "Just because Harris is missing doesn't mean he's dead."

"So if he's not dead, you think our chemistry teacher is secretly out committing human sacrifices?" Scott asks, Stiles admitting that the theory sounded way better in his head.

"What if it's another student, like Matt? We didn't know he was controlling Jackson and killing people," Noel offers, and Stiles says "Actually, I called that from day one, remember?"

"No you didn't," Noel says and laughs, Scott saying "Even if you had, it was never a serious suggestion. It was a theory, we didn't have any legitimate evidence that really pointed to him."

"I was being serious the whole time. Quite serious, actually, deadly serious and no one listened to me," Stiles says offensively and Noel says back "Well no one believed me that Jackson wasn't killing people of his own accord, you were the one that insisted he was evil deep down and doing it completely on purpose."

"People make mistakes, alright?" Stiles says in his defense, Noel just quirking an eyebrow as he proves his and Scott's point.

"Who are the other three suspects," Scott asks to break the argument up, Stiles taking the bait and saying Derek's sister is on his list.

"Why do you have such a vendetta against the Hale family?" Noel asks, sitting up and giving Stiles a look.

"It's not because she's a Hale, okay, it's because no one knows anything about her. It's also because she's Derek's sister."

"But you literally just-" Noel tries to say, but Stiles ignores him by saying his other main suspect is Scott's boss, Deaton.

Scott questions this, Stiles saying he doesn't like the whole "Obi-Wan thing" and that it freaks him out. Noel looks more amused than convinced, and Scott just looks confused.

"Oh my God, have you still not seen Star Wars?" Stiles asks, Noel turning to Scott in disbelief. "You've never seen Star Wars? How did I not know this?" he asks, Scott saying that if he makes it back alive, he'll watch it.

"Unbelievable," Noel says and shakes his head, laying back down as Scott asks for the last suspect. Stiles sighs and says almost hesitantly "Lydia. She was totally controlled by Peter and she had no idea, so..."

"Wouldn't I know if that was the case?" Noel asks, sitting back up once again. Stiles looks across at him and says "You're at my house studying or sleeping over most nights anyway, and during days you're with me and Scott. You don't know for sure where she goes when she says she's going to Allison's, or Aiden's, or anywhere for that matter."

Looking guilty but accepting the answer, Noel purses his lips and nods. All three of them lay back on the beds with a sigh as the scene changes.

—

We see Derek and Jennifer, struggling to get into Derek's loft. They get the door open, Jennifer saying she should be taking Derek to a hospital and not to his house. Derek insists that he'll be fine and that he can't go to a hospital. He passes out immediately after saying this, Jennifer struggling to keep him conscious.

—

Back at the hotel, Scott looks into the bathroom mirror and his eyes glow red for a brief second. He jumps back in shock, and we see Stiles meeting up with Boyd at the vending machine buying a snack.

The crackers Boyd was trying to buy get stuck, Stiles jovially offering to show Boyd his "patented method" for getting the stuck food out. Instead of watching, Boyd punches the grass and breaks it expressionlessly, and Stiles looks at him in shock and slight fear.

Boyd grabs his food and walks away, Stiles watching after him before grabbing some stuff himself and returning upstairs.

In Allison and Lydia's room, Allison is in the shower, asking Lydia if she got new towels. She doesn't get a response, and when she peeks out of the shower, Scott is standing there watching her expressionlessly. He seems to be in a trance similar to the one Boyd was just in.

Allison asks Scott what he's doing, and he says he was looking for her. She points out that she's naked, and he says he's seen her naked before, but that was when they were together. He asks her if they're still friends, and immediately after, asks if they can be closer friends.

She refuses when he tries to pull the shower curtain away from her body, and he apologizes before hurriedly leaving as he seemingly snaps out of his trance.

Back in the boys' room, Noel is standing at the sink, washing his hands. His hair is wet, suggesting he's just recently taken a shower, and he's in baggy clothes seemingly preparing for bed. But something is off about his posture and movements, everything coming across as stiff and almost labored.

He looks up at his reflection in a near trance, and when he faces the mirror, the face looking back at him is not his own. It's Laura's.

Her eyes are red as they were the last time he saw her (in season two at Lydia's party), but her clothes are no longer a typical young woman's. They're plain, torn, and dirty, and she smirks as Noel looks afraid at what he sees.

"So much to be done in one simple night, so little time to do it all," she says in a voice that's unlike the one we've heard from her thus far in all her appearances. It's deep and layered, more reminiscent of the scene from season one where she frightened Noel at the Hale house on the full moon.

Noel shakes his head and blinks to rid himself of the vision, saying "Laura, stop, that's really not funny. Of all the times you choose to show your face-"

When he opens his eyes and expects to see her normal again and teasing him, Laura's face has been replaced by Derek's in the reflection. Derek is bleeding all over, and he says one simple phrase through labored breaths as he stares back at Noel.

"You did this to me. It was your fault," Derek says, pausing for a beat before falling forward into the glass and seemingly cracking it from the inside. Blood trickles down the broken glass as Noel screams and backs away from the mirror, falling into the bathtub and gripping onto the walls for balance.

He breathes heavily as he looks around the bathroom, standing and seeing that his reflection is once again normal and the mirror isn't damaged at all. His scene ends and fades into Lydia's at the front desk as we hear Noel breathing heavily.

At the front desk, Lydia learns from the owner of the motel that 198 guests have committed suicide during their stays at the hotel, and they're still counting.

Right after saying this, we see Isaac flipping through TV stations of pure static.

—

After Allison tells her father she doesn't need to be picked up, we're back with Jennifer and Derek, as she pulls up his shirt to inspect his injuries. He asks her how bad it is, and she lightly flirts with him before saying that he's bleeding black blood. She asks if he's dying when he goes unresponsive, but after ensuring that he's breathing, she says this wasn't how she imagined their first date.

—

As Lydia is telling Allison about the hotel's history of suicides, she seemingly overhears people talking through the vents about killing themselves. She moves up to listen closer, and when the young couple pull the triggers on their guns, she stumbles back in shock and horror.

She asks Allison if she heard that, but Allison didn't hear anything. Lydia tells her the two people next door shot each other, and she runs out of the room to go next door. But the room next door is completely vacant, with no power. Lydia walks through the room calling out for people and finds a flashlight, turning it on to see a room under renovation.

"It had to be here, it was a guy and a girl and they sounded younger, but they were here," she insists, Allison saying that she believes her. Lydia then keeps looking, and while looking at the wall she sees screaming faces in the wood.

Boyd, meanwhile, is getting ice. He hears a girl's voice saying not to leave him, and after a second, he asks if it's "Alicia."

The girl asks why he left her, and tells him he wasn't supposed to, and he pushes the ice away to reveal the girl in question inside. He drops the ice bucket in shock, and Lydia says there's something seriously wrong with this motel and that they need to leave when they get back upstairs.

"They were suicides, not murders, and it's not like this place is haunted, right?" Allison asks her, Lydia saying that maybe it is.

"I bet that couple made their suicide pact in that very room. Maybe that's why they're renovating, maybe they've been scraping brain matter off the wood panelling" Lydia says, trying to get Allison to believe her.

"Maybe we should go find out," Allison suggests.

—

We see Isaac sleeping, and he wakes up to the sound of banging. He asks if it's Boyd to no response, but then he starts hearing chains rattling.

He sits up and starts to hear the voice of his dad, berating him and talking aloud for him as well as to him.

After some conversation with himself (and the occasional voiceover of his father) he says to go get the chains. This scares him visibly, as his father screams at him to get in the freezer.

Suddenly Isaac is inside a freezer, and he screams as the lid slams closed.

—

When the girls get to the front desk, they find it empty. Allison notices the number hanging on the wall in the room, boasting "201."

Allison reaffirms with Lydia that the number was 198, and Lydia swears that that was the number she saw. Allison asks if that means there's been three more suicides, and Lydia says fearfully "That, or three more are about to happen."

Blackout.

—

After the break, Scott's phone rings and he gets a call from his mother, telling him in a tearful voice that she "tried to stop him" from coming inside but she couldn't. Scott asks who she's talking about, and she tells him to look outside.

When he does, she's standing there looking terrified with Deucalion beside her. Scott asks him what he wants, and Deucalion says it should be obvious since Scott is an alpha now.

Scott denies this, saying Derek may still be alive. Deucalion spits back that he's dead, and that Scott knows this, so he'll be coming for him and everyone he loves next.

With that he claws at Melissa's throat, and Scott watches in mute terror before Stiles asks "Scott, you okay?"

Scott turns to see Stiles standing there, Noel beside him looking terrified and shaking slightly.

He looks up at Scott and his eyes seem unfocused, and he slowly goes and sits on the bed. Stiles then gets a text from Lydia, saying she needs to talk to him alone, and the two werewolves are left on their own in the room both visibly shaken by something the others don't understand.

—

After Danny and Ethan's sex scene, the girls and Stiles are in the girls' room talking about how Noel and Scott are acting strange, a way they haven't acted since the last full moon.

Stiles mentions how he found Noel curled in a ball in the shower in their room a few minutes ago, and how the boy hasn't said a word since. He then says what happened earlier with Boyd and the vending machine, and Lydia grabs a bible as she says they need to get out of the hotel or someone needs to do an exorcism before the werewolves kill them all.

Stiles asks if maybe it's not just the hotel, confirming with Allison that the number at the front desk went up by three. She says that it was in fact three, Stiles pointing out that maybe it has to do with the trios of sacrifices that have been happening, just that this time three werewolves are going to be sacrificed.

"No, that can't be right. There are four; Scott, Noel, Isaac, and Boyd," Lydia counts them off, then adds "Plus Ethan. That's five, that's too many."

"Three to sacrifice and two spares, whoever goes first goes first. They probably had a countless pool of virgins and people from the service in Beacon Hills, giving themselves five werewolves to choose from definitely wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility," Stiles supplies.

Lydia begs to get the hell out of there, but Stiles takes the bible from her hands and looks inside. He finds a newspaper article about a man that hung himself at the hotel, and there are other articles scattered all throughout the book.

Lydia points out that all these articles mention room 217, and wonders aloud if that means that every bible in every room has articles that detail the suicides that occurred inside. She then asks if the room next door has the article about the couple she heard earlier, and they all rush next door to check.

Stiles tries to open the door only to find it locked, Allison saying that it doesn't matter, and they need to get the werewolves out of the hotel. Inside the room, however, they hear a handsaw, and rush inside to see Ethan about to saw through his own stomach.

Stiles wrestles to get the saw out of his hands as Lydia unplugs it, but Ethan just tries again with his own claws. Allison and Stiles try to stop him, and push him over to get him to snap out of it.

When he does, he asks what happened, as if he wasn't aware of what he was doing. He then runs off, Stiles chasing after him.

—

We cut back to the loft next, where Jennifer is with Derek. He sits up and says that he has to find the others, and tells her that they think he's dead.

She suggests that that's probably a good thing, then asks him if he knows how many book characters fake deaths for their own advantage. She lists a few off, but he cuts her off and says "They need to know. He needs to know."

"Who is 'he'?" Jennifer asks, and Derek says almost like it hurts him "My ex."

Jennifer seems taken aback by this, especially because she just mentioned Romeo and Juliet almost suggestively in her list of literary fake deaths.

Derek looks at her and lets out a chuckle, saying "I'm not gay, before you bother to ask."

"I never said you were," she defends herself, and she quickly tacks onto that "Not that it would be a problem if you were, I just, uh..."

She trails off when she realizes she's not helping her case, and with a slow deep breath, she says "Derek, stop and take a look at yourself right now. You're like one giant, open wound, I'm not entirely sure you aren't really dead."

Derek doesn't say anything in response before we're back at the hotel.

—

There, Ethan is insisting he had no idea what he was doing or how he got to be in that room, and Stiles defends their prying by pointing out that they saved his life.

"Maybe you shouldn't have," he says angrily, going back to his room as the other three watch in stunned silence.

Lydia asks what they should do now, and Allison tells the two of them to get Isaac and Boyd while she gets Scott and Noel, because the best thing they can do is get them away from the hotel.

She heads upstairs then, Lydia moving to follow after her. But when Stiles doesn't come as well, she asks him why he's looking at her like that.

Stiles then draws a parallel between this night and the night Lydia poisoned everyone with wolfsbane at her party, Lydia saying "Noel never took the wolfsbane bait that night... Does that put him more or less at risk now?"

"Lets hope for less and deal with him last," he says, and Lydia gets a strange look in her eyes.

Blackout.

—

After Boyd's scene where he hears himself over the radio as a child talking to police about the last time he saw his sister, we're back at the loft with Jennifer and Derek.

She asks him why he doesn't have any sort of first aid equipment in the loft, which he justifies by saying he usually doesn't need them. She doesn't seem convinced, asking "Well, what about your ex? Didn't he ever need a band-aid, or some Neosporin, or anything to that effect?"

"Not after a certain point of our relationship, no," Derek informs, and then Jennifer asks how she can help fix him up. He tells her he just needs time, and the rest of the scene continues with no mentions of Noel.

—

After Jennifer and Derek share their first kiss, we're with Noel at the hotel.

He appears to be entering a random hotel room, not one we've seen before, staring at the floor. He steps into the room and closes the door behind him, the sound of it unnecessarily loud.

We hear whispers all throughout the room as he settles right in the center, but the whispers are nothing we can decipher. It's mostly just hissed consonants, and the occasional murmur of his name.

Noel's eyes get progressively wider as he stares at the ground, until his head looks up and he's face to face with Derek.

Derek looks absolutely gruesome, covered in blood, dirt, and distinct claw marks. Upon first glance they could just be any random injuries, but if you look at their exact locations and severities, they're actually multiple injuries Derek has suffered in the past, just now all in one place at the same time. Shards of glass are stuck in his hands from 1x03, claw marks run along his back from 1x06, etc.

It doesn't take much to work out that they're all wounds he's acquired while he was in Noel's presence.

Noel exhales deeply, his breath rushing from his mouth in a thick white cloud of condensation.

Derek's half-lidded eyes bore holes into Noel, staring down at him and swaying where he stands as if just the sheer struggle of staying on his feet is causing him pain.

Derek moves like he wants to speak, Noel standing there breathing hard in fear. But when Derek tries to choke out a sentence, blood pours from his mouth and flows down his chin. Drops of it fall down to the floor, and upon making contact, they start to harden.

We see Noel's legs shuddering to the left of the shot as the drop of blood starts to freeze on the ground.
When the camera shows Noel's upper body again, he is no longer in a hotel room- he is in a walk-in freezer, and Derek is nowhere to be found.

The "blood" on the floor is actually a water drop from an icicle hanging above Noel's head, and he shivers in the freezing cold as the shot zooms outward to show that he's locked himself inside the freezer and the temperature is well below freezing.

We then cut to Boyd entering the hotel lobby.

—

After Boyd sets his sights on the safe, we see Allison, and her entering Scott's room where the door is open.

Immediately after this Stiles is chasing after Lydia, apologizing and telling her he wasn't trying to suggest that she was attempting to kill anyone. He says that she may be involved in the suicides, then immediately backtracks as she hears a baby screaming and someone begging them to stop.

She stoops down to listen to the baby through the grate, and reports that she hears water running. We then see Boyd stepping into a tub of water, holding a heavy safe.

Lydia realizes that the mother is going to drown herself and her baby as Boyd sinks under the water, and Lydia says aloud in terror that someone is drowning.

Blackout.

—

When we return from the break, Lydia and Stiles rush into Boyd's room, trying to save him where he's pinned by the safe under the water.

Stiles struggles to move the safe off Boyd's chest, but is unsuccessful. He steps back to think and burns himself on a heater, which makes him realize that heat is what snaps the werewolves out of their suicidal stupors.

Lydia points out angrily that Boyd is underwater, but then she remembers the self-oxidizing flares that can burn underwater on the bus. Stiles runs to get one as she looks under the bed, where Isaac is curled up in terror.

Stiles then runs in with the flares, ignites one, and throws it in the water with Boyd. Almost immediately, Boyd throws the safe off his chest and rises out of the water with a roar.

Stiles then touches Isaac with the hot flare, and both of them are back to normal.

—

Before the scene where they find Scott, Isaac sits on the bed he was just under and rocks back and forth a bit.

Stiles asks him what's wrong, but he shakes his head and responds "I don't know, I'm still cold. Everything, it's all so cold."

"Are you suicidal at all?" Lydia asks, but he shakes his head and says "No, I'm fine, I'm just... Freezing."

"I feel it too. Something's not right," Boyd says, and he and Isaac share a look before he asks Stiles where Noel is.

"I don't know, we haven't found him or Scott yet," Stiles says dejectedly, before Lydia's eyebrows knit together tightly. She hears teeth chattering, and the whir of a freezer, and a little girl's voice saying "We're gonna be okay, someone's gonna find us in here. It'll be okay. Do you wanna wear my jacket?"

She tenses up and says quickly "He's freezing. Wherever he is, he's freezing to death."

Stiles immediately bolts out of the room, and the camera follows him down a few hallways to a door labeled "COLD STORAGE". He looks in the small window of the door and sees Noel inside, shaking fiercely in an attempt to stay warm, staring up at the exact level of Derek's height.

It doesn't take long for Isaac to run up behind him and tug the door open with a roar, the lock on the inside breaking as a rush of cold air tumbles out of the freezer and meets the humidity outside.

Isaac, without hesitation, barrels inside and pulls Noel out, stripping off his own shirt and pulling it over Noel's head. Stiles takes his jacket off and drapes it over Noel's shoulders, Isaac looking up at him as he rubs Noel's arms in an attempt to get circulation back.

"Go find Scott," he instructs, as Boyd and Lydia run in with their arms piled high with blankets. Boyd also holds the flare from earlier, still burning, but down to its last legs.

Noel sees the red of the flare and mumbles wistfully "Derek..." before collapsing against Isaac.

"Is he dead? Is he dying?" Stiles demands, checking Noel for a pulse. Isaac shakes his head as Boyd comes over with the flare and blankets.

"We'll take care of him, he's not dead, but you have to find-"

Before Isaac can finish his sentence, we hear Allison in the distance scream "Scott?!"

Stiles takes one more look at Noel before dashing off to where Allison screamed, dragging Lydia along behind him. We see Boyd and Isaac exchange a worried glance before Boyd moves the flare to Noel's skin, and we then cut to Stiles and Lydia finding Scott standing in a puddle of gasoline with the second flare lit in his hand.

—

From there, the scene is unchanged. Noel doesn't interfere with the climax of the episode aside from one brief mention by Scott, in which he accuses himself of letting the other boy down by not saving Derek.

After Lydia saves Stiles and Scott from the explosion and we see the Darach within the blaze, we flash to the next morning like nothing happened.

The seven teens are all sleeping on the bus, Noel wrapped up in everyone's jackets and a mountain of blankets. He sits up from where he's laying in Isaac's lap, a blanket draped over his head so he's completely encased in warmth.

Everyone else from the team loads onto the bus after that, Ethan sitting beside Scott and thanking him for saving his life. Stiles points out that he was the one that saved Ethan's life, but Ethan continues without acknowledging that.

He tells Scott that Derek's probably still alive, but that he's responsible for killing Ennis. Because of that, one of two things will happen- Either Derek will become a member of the Alpha pack and kill his own, or Kali will come after him and they'll kill him as retribution.

"Your little code of ethics there is sort of barbaric," Stiles says as Ethan steps away to sit with Danny.

Stiles and Noel both move up a seat, so Stiles is sitting with Scott and Noel is where Stiles just was (Isaac is no longer there, and he presumably ducked away when Noel realized how they had been sleeping the previous night).

Lydia takes the coach's whistle from him and tries to blow it, finding powdered wolfsbane inside. They then make the connection that every time the coach blew the whistle, he was letting wolfsbane out into the air, which made the five werewolves on board poisoned.

"So that's how the Darach did it," Stiles says, before throwing the whistle out the window of the bus to he coach's protest.

—

The episode ends with Chris Argent going to visit Gerard, who is still alive and bleeding black blood where he sits in a wheelchair. It turns out the man at the beginning of the episode that killed himself was Chris's uncle, and the werewolf that bit him was Deucalion.